Draw a shape with the Pencil, Line, Arc, or Freeform tools

You can create your own custom shapes by using the rectangle, ellipse, arc, freeform, and pencil shapes in Visio.

If you want to be able to apply fill colors to your new shape, you need to create a closed shape. If you use the Rectangle tool or the Ellipse tool, you get closed shapes automatically. By default, closed shapes are filled with a solid color.

In this example, the rectangle is a closed shape because it is filled with a solid color. You can tell that the triangle is not closed because it is not filled with a solid color and you can see the drawing background through the shape.